Trace
by Nachtweiss
Summary: Sometimes, when she is lying in bed at night, she touches the place where his head used to rest and wonders where he has gone. NejiSaku.


Sometimes, when she is lying in bed at night, she touches the place where his head used to rest and wonders where he has gone. It's a large world, and when she thinks of all of the places he could be, she shivers, because it brings home the point that she has lost him forever, that he is irreplaceable. She wonders if he knows that she hasn't had a lover since he left, that she hasn't felt anything like what she feels for him every day, that she hasn't even been tempted. He is her point of orbit, that which she flies around again and again, never able to forget, always able to forgive.

It has been…oh, so many years, and still she lies here, touching the place where he used to lie, going to his closet and smelling his clothes that still carry his scent, touching his scrolls and various items that are left as he left them on that night so many long nights ago. Sometimes, that is all she does for hours, sometimes days—simply touching what was his, what is him to her now, because there is no other equivalent and there never will be for her, not ever. This is all there is, now. This is all she has.

She never talks about him to anyone, even though she can see that it worries them. It isn't their right to know, she decides, it isn't their right to ask. And so, she keeps quiet, eyes never letting a trace of emotion go if ever he comes up, and quickly they drop it. She isn't one to talk about her pain—it only makes it more tangent, creates more. A combination of memories only enlarges everything that is inside her, until she is so full that she bursts. But sometimes, they catch her, as Ino has done a few times, simply standing there, maybe with her face close to one of his shirts so as to breath in the smell, maybe touching his comb, looking in his mirror.

(She must always be so delicate when she does these things, though. If she is not careful, she might break something, and then he would never forgive her. His scent might leave them, to be replaced by hers, the feeling of his hands might vanish forever.)

She has continued to go on missions—she always has, even when he had first left. She heals those who are wounded, fights those who must be fought, and thinks of him constantly. And so, her fighting begins to mirror his, until their two styles have blended and she is a menace, a calm, seemingly invincible monster. (That is all him—she has never felt invincible.) She moves like a dancer, except that her partner is missing and so some of her steps are fumbled without the synchronization of another. And she always comes out alive, even if she is near death—she cannot die until he is there.

She used to think that he would appear magically by her side if she only wished hard enough, and so she wishes, standing on the bridge where they first kissed, clenching the railing, eyes tightly shut, wishing, wishing, wishing that any moment he will say her name, touch her hand. And, even though nothing ever happens, she still believes it, in the part of that is a little girl, and sometimes she catches herself with her eyes shut, hoping beyond belief that somehow time will be erased and he will come back to her and stay with her forever.

He is etched in her memory, although she doesn't have a photograph of him. His white eyes, so cold and yet so warm, his coffee-colored hair that flows so gently over his perfect shoulders, the seal on his forehead that she traces carefully with her fingers, his smile, so adept at hiding emotion, his hands, long-fingered and strong, yet so caring and gentle when he touches her. She can still feel his skin as she presses against it, sense his arms wrapping around her, holding her, protecting her as she holds and protects him. They fit into each other perfectly—two sides of a circle, melded together into one perfect being. She never should have let him go that night, but she did and look where it has left her—with only memories.

(And he has left her with so many, enough to fill up her life and twice more, enough for her to sink into like a warm summer day, enough for tears—although she hasn't cried since the day that he left—and enough for smiles, laughter, everything.)

Sometimes she touches her flat, muscled stomach and wonders what their child would look like—would it have her green eyes and his hair, or his pale orbs and her outrageous, pastel pink locks? Would it laugh like her or smile secretly like him? Would it be a boy or a girl? She can imagine them all, together, sitting in the kitchen, or lying, cuddling on the bed, and her heart aches for the joy of it and the regret that it never happened.

(But it will.)

He used to sing to her, to help her sleep, or just because. No one else ever knew that he could sing, but he could, in a rich, clear tenor that befit him so well. He would hold her in his arms and sing old songs and she would join in with her light, pure soprano, and together they would fill up the house and the entire world with music and light and love. She still sings sometimes, remembering the songs that they used to sing, his voice fitting in perfectly from her memory. But she can never seem to fill that world as they used to, even though she tried so hard to.

She is singing the day that it happens.

She is cut off mid-verse as the feeling cuts through her and breaks. She races upstairs into their room and sees it—his bureau mirror, shattered into a million glittering pieces by a rock that sailed in through the open window. There are children outside, running in all directions, terrified of being caught, but she is frozen as she sees her entire world fall apart into pieces as small as the mirror. She can see herself in them, broken, jagged, bits of her missing, tiny flashes of a woman. Her heart is beating faster and faster and faster until suddenly, it stops, and she sees herself floating until there is the familiar thump of her most precious organ and she is alive again. Slowly she kneels down, and, even slower still, she begins to cry for the first time in twenty years, thick, silent tears that fall onto the shards and break on their edges, and it hurts so much and feels so good, like an antidote to a poison found at the last possible second. Her tears are blood and she is bleeding the wound until nothing remains and it heals, although it never will. She sits there and cries for all of those years in which he has been gone and yet has never left, and all of those years when she was so alone and so helpless, and slowly, the pieces of him that are him and her that are her separate and come together, cleanly this time, until she is truly one with him, even though he is lost to her, perhaps forever. And when she can finally see again, can finally breathe again, she smiles, and gets up, and goes along to finish whatever she was doing, because she knows now, and that knowledge has completed her.

And so, when she touches the place where his head used to rest and feels that there is no one there, she cries sometimes, but rarely. Instead, she rolls over into that patch of emptiness and fills it up with her, and hopes that, wherever he is, he is full of her as well. And, although she doesn't know it, somewhere, in the endless world of forever, he feels the same thing.


End file.
